Legolas_Katarn
BACKER
Played with the Lil' Manster, 1.07 Translation Patch.
Took a long time for this one to get translated to what could be considered a complete state, and was much more recently updated with scrip fixes that shows this as being easily one of the best narratives in the Fire Emblem series.
Thracia 776 tells the story of what happened to some of the character and another part of the continent in the time skipped and second generation section of Fire Emblem 4.
Good story and setting with many side characters continuing to show up in later events while more important characters give you more insight into their character when they show up in Fire Emblem 4. Not following anywhere near as much the cartoonish black and white morality of the newer games (well, apart from some of the more major antagonists of a child sacrificing cult of a dark god, but, that aside). With Thracia you get a lot of details about the different nations, their history, their past and current conflicts, geography, starving and dying populace in barren areas causing refugees or banditry, effects of occupying forces on other countries and what some nations are willing to do to not be taken over by the empire, you have two strategic advisors for a large part of the game that are giving the main character often good advice while informing him of the wider issues of the nation and its people to aid in his future rule (as opposed to newer games where they like to make some random jackass a stand in for you controlling the army over the useless lords, or somehow a teacher while your character knows nothing about the world).
Well made maps that give you a variety of objectives. Capturing a location, reaching an area, attempting to get your entire army to an escape point (one level even starting half your army at the escape point while the other half is far away and can be overwhelmed by pursuing forces), defending a location, protecting civilians, etc. Reinforcements are handled well, as are positioning of long range ballista or enemy magic users that can cause status effects on your forces and more difficult enemy groups tend to be equipped with fitting weapons that might have a high critical hit change or that might be strong against certain types of units.
The fatigue system where characters can become tired and need to be kept out of a battle and the level design causes you to use more of your large roster. Although, fatigue can pretty much be bypassed by just fighting battles in the arena, making money and buying stamina drinks to remove fatigue levels, having that option is good as the negative side of the fatigue system is that it creates issues with missing conversations and recruiting talks that first time players would have no way to know about in advance without a guide.
Capture system works well, you can fight with lowered stats in an attempt to capture an enemy which can allow you to recruit some characters, take all of their items, or just let certain characters go without killing them. Units can also be captured if they lose their offensive items by breaking them or having them stolen.
Character Leadership/FCM/Vigor stats are a good way to add more variety to characters where everyone adding to your total leadership gives every unit a bonus to hit and dodge and this applies with enemy commanders to their units as well giving leaders an actual effect on the battle, vigor from 0-5 gives a chance to be able to take a second turn, and FCM between 0-5 gives a character that number as a multiplier to their critical hit chance for their second attacks. Movement is a bit more unique in this game as well where certain characters might just start with a higher number of space they can move, and each character has a 1-3% chance to raise their movement rate with each level up.
There are a few issues. The usual thing in Fire Emblem, with some oddly poor units with character's that everything narratively tells you should be better. You get access to scrolls that can effect stat gain rates at level up and you can equip as many as a character has slots to carry items to stack all the bonuses together. On one hand this means you can make almost any character good and viable to use, on the other this makes everyone pretty similar. Stats, except for HP, are all capped at 20 and classes effect nothing except for allowing access to a set of weapons or staves to use and very few giving passive skills (swordmaster and sages learn adept to possibly attack more, thieves learn how to steal, the dancer to dance). You can easily end up with characters who gain almost no real benefit when you promote them to their next class tier and can end up in situations where certain mages might even have the same defensive and avoid value as a heavily armored knight. The game also takes status effects way too far in the last few stages where multiple enemies can just be putting your units to sleep, into a berserk state, or silencing them for the entire stage unless you knew to stock up and save some, pretty rare, restore staves while also having enough units capable of using them (while also not getting themselves hit by status effects in the process).
This is easily one of the best Fire Emblem games (along with 4, 6, and 9), and is one of the better SRPGs that I've played.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1391382884435386371
Took a long time for this one to get translated to what could be considered a complete state, and was much more recently updated with scrip fixes that shows this as being easily one of the best narratives in the Fire Emblem series.
Thracia 776 tells the story of what happened to some of the character and another part of the continent in the time skipped and second generation section of Fire Emblem 4.
Good story and setting with many side characters continuing to show up in later events while more important characters give you more insight into their character when they show up in Fire Emblem 4. Not following anywhere near as much the cartoonish black and white morality of the newer games (well, apart from some of the more major antagonists of a child sacrificing cult of a dark god, but, that aside). With Thracia you get a lot of details about the different nations, their history, their past and current conflicts, geography, starving and dying populace in barren areas causing refugees or banditry, effects of occupying forces on other countries and what some nations are willing to do to not be taken over by the empire, you have two strategic advisors for a large part of the game that are giving the main character often good advice while informing him of the wider issues of the nation and its people to aid in his future rule (as opposed to newer games where they like to make some random jackass a stand in for you controlling the army over the useless lords, or somehow a teacher while your character knows nothing about the world).
Well made maps that give you a variety of objectives. Capturing a location, reaching an area, attempting to get your entire army to an escape point (one level even starting half your army at the escape point while the other half is far away and can be overwhelmed by pursuing forces), defending a location, protecting civilians, etc. Reinforcements are handled well, as are positioning of long range ballista or enemy magic users that can cause status effects on your forces and more difficult enemy groups tend to be equipped with fitting weapons that might have a high critical hit change or that might be strong against certain types of units.
The fatigue system where characters can become tired and need to be kept out of a battle and the level design causes you to use more of your large roster. Although, fatigue can pretty much be bypassed by just fighting battles in the arena, making money and buying stamina drinks to remove fatigue levels, having that option is good as the negative side of the fatigue system is that it creates issues with missing conversations and recruiting talks that first time players would have no way to know about in advance without a guide.
Capture system works well, you can fight with lowered stats in an attempt to capture an enemy which can allow you to recruit some characters, take all of their items, or just let certain characters go without killing them. Units can also be captured if they lose their offensive items by breaking them or having them stolen.
Character Leadership/FCM/Vigor stats are a good way to add more variety to characters where everyone adding to your total leadership gives every unit a bonus to hit and dodge and this applies with enemy commanders to their units as well giving leaders an actual effect on the battle, vigor from 0-5 gives a chance to be able to take a second turn, and FCM between 0-5 gives a character that number as a multiplier to their critical hit chance for their second attacks. Movement is a bit more unique in this game as well where certain characters might just start with a higher number of space they can move, and each character has a 1-3% chance to raise their movement rate with each level up.
There are a few issues. The usual thing in Fire Emblem, with some oddly poor units with character's that everything narratively tells you should be better. You get access to scrolls that can effect stat gain rates at level up and you can equip as many as a character has slots to carry items to stack all the bonuses together. On one hand this means you can make almost any character good and viable to use, on the other this makes everyone pretty similar. Stats, except for HP, are all capped at 20 and classes effect nothing except for allowing access to a set of weapons or staves to use and very few giving passive skills (swordmaster and sages learn adept to possibly attack more, thieves learn how to steal, the dancer to dance). You can easily end up with characters who gain almost no real benefit when you promote them to their next class tier and can end up in situations where certain mages might even have the same defensive and avoid value as a heavily armored knight. The game also takes status effects way too far in the last few stages where multiple enemies can just be putting your units to sleep, into a berserk state, or silencing them for the entire stage unless you knew to stock up and save some, pretty rare, restore staves while also having enough units capable of using them (while also not getting themselves hit by status effects in the process).
This is easily one of the best Fire Emblem games (along with 4, 6, and 9), and is one of the better SRPGs that I've played.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1391382884435386371
Action side scrolling spin off of the more strategic Door Kickers. Fight against the true enemy of gamers, doors, and their minions that have taken hostages or planted bombs around the environment. Six characters to choose from with their own weapons and equipment options, and skills to upgrade. A rifle using assault class, shotgun using breacher, woman with a shield with different functions and a pistol, off duty cop in the wrong/right place who brought his dad's old rifle but forgot his pants, recon class with silent guns, unique gadgets, and lockpicking skills, and an FBI agent with a forward roll and a stronger and faster melee attack. Each character can level up and spend points to learn new passive abilities, improve their aim or defense, or increase two skill trees that effect everyone. Killing enemies and saving hostages fills a strategic meter that can be used for special abilities to heal or to activate more powerful weapons.
Character and level art is good, music is good, player made levels are able to be downloaded, and a zombie mode can be turned on that bring portals full of new undead enemies into existing stages. It's a fun enough time but can start to get repetitive fast, especially after you max out the character you want to use and can easily get through most situations just using quickly refilling points to get more armor and health. The main challenge will come from getting the three star rankings on the levels where hostages will require more thought to safely rescue (which is much easier with certain characters).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1386153648548319235
Character and level art is good, music is good, player made levels are able to be downloaded, and a zombie mode can be turned on that bring portals full of new undead enemies into existing stages. It's a fun enough time but can start to get repetitive fast, especially after you max out the character you want to use and can easily get through most situations just using quickly refilling points to get more armor and health. The main challenge will come from getting the three star rankings on the levels where hostages will require more thought to safely rescue (which is much easier with certain characters).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1386153648548319235
2006
Tactical FPS, lead a five man SWAT team into some more realistic scenarios and some ridiculous ones. You end up going against cultist, a Christian anti rock group, white supremacist, and militant farmers along with some more generic robberies gone wrong or a failed assassination attempt.
Lethal and nonlethal weapons and gear can be equipped to each character. You can order both teams of two separately or together and can see through a camera in your hud to see what they to a sniper team sees. Tense gameplay, though some odd decisions when it comes to needing to handcuff civilians who often don't want to surrender (I guess because they don't give you enough people to get them out of the building) requiring you to have a taser or pepper spray to make them surrender. Same odd moments when enemies refuse to drop their weapon when they are blinded or hit by gas and surrounded by your team.
A lot of detail spent on each mission when it comes to the locations, briefing, environment design, and creating areas that work well with the mechanics that have changes from difficulty and randomization. Very good to very questionable AI. Expansion makes improvements when it comes to order, equipment, and an added melee button that is used more to stop the odd never surrendering situations.
Anything above the easy difficulty requires you to finish a set mission with a certain score with points earned for completing it, not being wounded, not losing each member of your team, picking up all evidence and guns, reporting everything, capturing or wounding instead of killing anyone. With points lost if you injure one of the other SWAT members or injure or kill any armed suspects that aren't threatening you (or in most cases that are clearly threatening you and might have just killed multiple people, clearly not an accurate police representation.
Player made mods can combine the main and expansion campaigns (allowing you to use the new options and equipment in the old levels), add widescreen and 1080, add in cut content like traps, and there are player made map packs.
Becomes much easier when you realize the power of the paintball gun.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1378360357060706305
Lethal and nonlethal weapons and gear can be equipped to each character. You can order both teams of two separately or together and can see through a camera in your hud to see what they to a sniper team sees. Tense gameplay, though some odd decisions when it comes to needing to handcuff civilians who often don't want to surrender (I guess because they don't give you enough people to get them out of the building) requiring you to have a taser or pepper spray to make them surrender. Same odd moments when enemies refuse to drop their weapon when they are blinded or hit by gas and surrounded by your team.
A lot of detail spent on each mission when it comes to the locations, briefing, environment design, and creating areas that work well with the mechanics that have changes from difficulty and randomization. Very good to very questionable AI. Expansion makes improvements when it comes to order, equipment, and an added melee button that is used more to stop the odd never surrendering situations.
Anything above the easy difficulty requires you to finish a set mission with a certain score with points earned for completing it, not being wounded, not losing each member of your team, picking up all evidence and guns, reporting everything, capturing or wounding instead of killing anyone. With points lost if you injure one of the other SWAT members or injure or kill any armed suspects that aren't threatening you (or in most cases that are clearly threatening you and might have just killed multiple people, clearly not an accurate police representation.
Player made mods can combine the main and expansion campaigns (allowing you to use the new options and equipment in the old levels), add widescreen and 1080, add in cut content like traps, and there are player made map packs.
Becomes much easier when you realize the power of the paintball gun.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1378360357060706305
2019
A blood filled workplace satire survival horror comedy. Brian Pasternack is on a low rung of a caste system until the day he receives a letter from a major corporation wanting him to appear for his first job, later revealed to be working as a witch hunter. A witch having been corrupting the company for decades. With most of the corrupting influence and employee attitudes being directly or a metaphor for work and social issues. Monsters are ignored or worshipped, work is done over and around dead bodies, your job is targeted at lower class people to lure them into the company as hunters and sacrifices, employees looking for promotion attempt to get their rivals killed, employees make excuses of getting used to the company culture, not wanting to quit with it looking bad on their resume, or needing to help the team as reasons to stay with the company.
Good soundtrack and sound design. Satisfying puzzle for navigation and the corrupted bosses and enemies you encounter, lots of secrets with multiple endings with the updated version that released last year adding an alternate path for the endgame. Cast of likable and appropriately hateable characters. Well done and mood fitting manga influenced pixel artwork and short cutscenes.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1376103030756499464
Good soundtrack and sound design. Satisfying puzzle for navigation and the corrupted bosses and enemies you encounter, lots of secrets with multiple endings with the updated version that released last year adding an alternate path for the endgame. Cast of likable and appropriately hateable characters. Well done and mood fitting manga influenced pixel artwork and short cutscenes.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1376103030756499464
2021
Side scrolling action that starts fun but simple before giving you double and wall jumps, parry, a downward strike to bounce off enemies, sprints with a lunging invulnerable slash all leading to more interesting movement. Boss fights are varied in style with good looking enemies, though are pretty easy to beat (even when going for each of their achievement challenges). Good art though not that unique as the future dystopia setting and level backgrounds is fairly common, great soundtrack. There are more hidden pickups that will increase your health or SP for your special attacks but your health mostly increases automatically from beating mid level bosses so you aren't overly punished for not finding every hidden thing like you would be in most games that do that. The only real difficult parts of the game tend to come from some of the SP items you need to backtrack for.
The game controls well but the sprint attack is likely going to be fairly unwieldy outside of the better players, but the game doesn't overly force the move onto you as you can almost always get through sections without it. The game is pretty easy outside of knockback pushing you into instant kill pits and those deaths can always be annoying but start to get mitigated a bit once you gain the option to double jump and can angle yourself out of some of them. Even as someone saying the game is easy, I am not good at using the sprint attack. The pickups for currency to power the save machines for additional functions is just pointless as I never came close to running out and even if you did you could just grind them doing nothing for the game but adding a potential layer of tedium.
Very solid game, complaints don't really amount to much, though all the skills are rarely used together to create more interesting stage design (probably not helped by giving some of the abilities so far into the game). Not at the level of excellence that I would find the Shovel Knight games but still an easy recommendation.
First playthrough with 100% item collection and all but four achievements, took about 4 hours and 20 minutes with 66 deaths (with a good number of them being from trying to beat a boss without touching water and trying not to get hit on the motorcycle section).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1373601628259975169
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XScyr8TBgM
The game controls well but the sprint attack is likely going to be fairly unwieldy outside of the better players, but the game doesn't overly force the move onto you as you can almost always get through sections without it. The game is pretty easy outside of knockback pushing you into instant kill pits and those deaths can always be annoying but start to get mitigated a bit once you gain the option to double jump and can angle yourself out of some of them. Even as someone saying the game is easy, I am not good at using the sprint attack. The pickups for currency to power the save machines for additional functions is just pointless as I never came close to running out and even if you did you could just grind them doing nothing for the game but adding a potential layer of tedium.
Very solid game, complaints don't really amount to much, though all the skills are rarely used together to create more interesting stage design (probably not helped by giving some of the abilities so far into the game). Not at the level of excellence that I would find the Shovel Knight games but still an easy recommendation.
First playthrough with 100% item collection and all but four achievements, took about 4 hours and 20 minutes with 66 deaths (with a good number of them being from trying to beat a boss without touching water and trying not to get hit on the motorcycle section).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1373601628259975169
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XScyr8TBgM
2021
A short adventure game about a pig farmer planning to back out of a deal he made with the mob 15 years ago after his conscience and recent life events prevent him from carrying on in his role anymore.
Adios is the final walk you take around your house and reflections on the events, things, and loved ones that lead your life down its current path and helped to form who you are while you prepare to leave your life behind. The farmer slowly putting into words all the doubts about the life he's been living for himself and for his long time friend, partner in crime, and potential killer over the course of the day. Often while your friend tries to dissuade you from your course of action or to change topics on what often starts as a more mundane subject but ends as something more personal for one or both men. Simple but beautifully somber setting, with attention to small details.
Occasionally, you are able to choose from different dialogue prompts when asked a question, but who your character is and the decisions they have made is already set and no inconsequential change, horse shoe victory, flavor soda you throw your friend, or how spicy you make your curry will change the ending. That you can't alter who your character is to create some ridiculous ending and that the most narratively altering thing the conversation choices do is to offer you blocked out choices for things that the farmer really wants to say, is afraid to say, or is considering saying when overtaken by emotion only gives more insight into his state of mind.
A grounded and well told story with an excellent voice cast that help to further highlight and bring the needed emotion to the the well written dialogue.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1372405680607404038
Adios is the final walk you take around your house and reflections on the events, things, and loved ones that lead your life down its current path and helped to form who you are while you prepare to leave your life behind. The farmer slowly putting into words all the doubts about the life he's been living for himself and for his long time friend, partner in crime, and potential killer over the course of the day. Often while your friend tries to dissuade you from your course of action or to change topics on what often starts as a more mundane subject but ends as something more personal for one or both men. Simple but beautifully somber setting, with attention to small details.
Occasionally, you are able to choose from different dialogue prompts when asked a question, but who your character is and the decisions they have made is already set and no inconsequential change, horse shoe victory, flavor soda you throw your friend, or how spicy you make your curry will change the ending. That you can't alter who your character is to create some ridiculous ending and that the most narratively altering thing the conversation choices do is to offer you blocked out choices for things that the farmer really wants to say, is afraid to say, or is considering saying when overtaken by emotion only gives more insight into his state of mind.
A grounded and well told story with an excellent voice cast that help to further highlight and bring the needed emotion to the the well written dialogue.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1372405680607404038
2020
An arcade combat flight simulator very similar to the Ace Combat series but made by significantly less people for less money while still managing to be as good as those games and selling for half the cost. It looks great, the stages are varied, you have a good variety of planes with two seaters even given you another person with you who chimes in with the regular chatter. It controls well, tends to have a better cockpit view than the Ace Combat games if that is your proffered playmode. Has a pretty strong soundtrack, entertaining allies, gameplay modifiers to turn on in the campaign, and a separate mode where you choose missions while being able to hire ally pilots to fight with you
Problems tend to be the same thing any game in this genre suffers from. Fights against aces are just terrible as they do impossible nonsense maneuvers while constantly firing at you while still being no real threat on the lower difficulties. Larger planes and naval units with multiple areas to target need to destroy every weapon hardpoint they have before you can blow them up. Exclusive to this game is that there are no saves or checkpoints in missions, which is really no issue on the easier settings but it is pretty annoying when some in game event happens that prevent you from being able to see and then starts back up with you having no way to avoid crashing. The conquest mode where you can hire some allies is a nice idea but pretty barebones and your ally units are the usual unimpressive teammates you get in these games but with no personality. The ending to the campaign is also pretty ridiculous and mechanically dull.
Even if it wasn't being sold for such a low price, I'd still highly recommend it for fans of arcade combat flight sims. The problems are rarely issues, and I suppose matter less depending on your loadout and plane and are outweighed by the positives. And that's if they don't continue development in a way that further improves the game.
Having no VR headset I don't know how well that option works.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1370918866344312832
Problems tend to be the same thing any game in this genre suffers from. Fights against aces are just terrible as they do impossible nonsense maneuvers while constantly firing at you while still being no real threat on the lower difficulties. Larger planes and naval units with multiple areas to target need to destroy every weapon hardpoint they have before you can blow them up. Exclusive to this game is that there are no saves or checkpoints in missions, which is really no issue on the easier settings but it is pretty annoying when some in game event happens that prevent you from being able to see and then starts back up with you having no way to avoid crashing. The conquest mode where you can hire some allies is a nice idea but pretty barebones and your ally units are the usual unimpressive teammates you get in these games but with no personality. The ending to the campaign is also pretty ridiculous and mechanically dull.
Even if it wasn't being sold for such a low price, I'd still highly recommend it for fans of arcade combat flight sims. The problems are rarely issues, and I suppose matter less depending on your loadout and plane and are outweighed by the positives. And that's if they don't continue development in a way that further improves the game.
Having no VR headset I don't know how well that option works.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1370918866344312832
1991
Horizontal scrolling mech shoot em up. Four mech types to choose or you can build you own by choosing between four special weapons, melee weapons, and leg types. Leg type changes movement speed, jump height, and number of ally soldiers that can ride and shoot off you (2-4). Your special weapon can be used when a meter charges once or twice for a more powerful version and the charges come fairly quickly, you can squat down and dash along the ground, if you are flying or underwater you can dash upwards, holding down the fire button will lock you into shooting in a certain direction or angle while allowing you to move back or forward, your melee weapon is used on close targets and can destroy certain enemy projectiles. Powerups can be found to increase your life, fill your charge meter, or power up your main weapons. Weapons drop in the form of a cylinder that you shoot to change the letter on, signifying the spread vulcan gun, a laser gun, grenade launcher, or a kind of shotgun energy weapon.
When your mech is destroyed you eject and continue to fight as a pilot. Your pilot form can have allies follow you while your suit makes you fast, maneuverable, and a small target, but you lose your special and melee weapon, one hit will kill you, and your main weapon is down to the weakest form. When you die you can choose to respawn in one of the game's four mech configurations or in the fifth form that you could have constructed yourself.
Responsive, varied stages, good bosses, good music, and being able to choose your own mech parts is a good touch. Kind of sequel to Vapor Trail but plays nothing like it.
US version removes stage story intermissions, level select that gives you two mission options for an easier and harder missions, three of the four endings, but has you play through all 12 stages like Japan's expert mode. Better than a lot of games that would just put you on a linear path while removing the other levels. This does mean that the difficulty fluctuates quite a bit between stages, the game can last too long, and while the bosses are different there are similar styled ones that probably wouldn't have seen as much if you were going off a stage select.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1371224690535010305
When your mech is destroyed you eject and continue to fight as a pilot. Your pilot form can have allies follow you while your suit makes you fast, maneuverable, and a small target, but you lose your special and melee weapon, one hit will kill you, and your main weapon is down to the weakest form. When you die you can choose to respawn in one of the game's four mech configurations or in the fifth form that you could have constructed yourself.
Responsive, varied stages, good bosses, good music, and being able to choose your own mech parts is a good touch. Kind of sequel to Vapor Trail but plays nothing like it.
US version removes stage story intermissions, level select that gives you two mission options for an easier and harder missions, three of the four endings, but has you play through all 12 stages like Japan's expert mode. Better than a lot of games that would just put you on a linear path while removing the other levels. This does mean that the difficulty fluctuates quite a bit between stages, the game can last too long, and while the bosses are different there are similar styled ones that probably wouldn't have seen as much if you were going off a stage select.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1371224690535010305
Side scrolling 2.5D action platformer. Good level design, nice backgrounds, alternate paths, varied enemies that can have some cosmetic differences depending on the situation. The las stage in just the first area could have been the finale of the game. Having you move through a burning castle as enemies are on fire, the ceiling falls down, a giant robot attacks you through the destroyed walls, leading to a boss fight as your character followed by a second giant robot boss fight that plays in a completely different way to the rest of the game.
Day and night cycles as you play with different enemies and town changes. You can switch between characters with different abilities and enemy deaths (Yae's katana cuts enemies in half) but this can only be done in towns or certain areas rather than on the fly slowing things down when you want to switch and likely having you stick with Goemon for the majority of the time due to his superior jumps and the main threat being falling off cliffs. But there are times where you have access to character switching in a level when you get to a part that requires different abilities. Might be that the game being 2-4 players is why they don't have that option.
A need to find entry passes to access parts of the map or the final section of each area by finding hidden passes, doing mostly dull side quests, and finding ones hidden in town just slows the game down. Some of the side activities are more interesting but a lot of them just have you going back to completed maps looking for items or enemy types while on a time limit that will likely require you to know which paths things are on to complete it. View is a little too close and can make it difficult to see sometimes.
Not a big fan of the busywork and looking for hidden items but it is a very good game. Need to try the second, third, and fourth SNES games now.
This series as well as ones like Klonoa make for some good side scrollers that a lot of people probably missed.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1366291465773613058
Day and night cycles as you play with different enemies and town changes. You can switch between characters with different abilities and enemy deaths (Yae's katana cuts enemies in half) but this can only be done in towns or certain areas rather than on the fly slowing things down when you want to switch and likely having you stick with Goemon for the majority of the time due to his superior jumps and the main threat being falling off cliffs. But there are times where you have access to character switching in a level when you get to a part that requires different abilities. Might be that the game being 2-4 players is why they don't have that option.
A need to find entry passes to access parts of the map or the final section of each area by finding hidden passes, doing mostly dull side quests, and finding ones hidden in town just slows the game down. Some of the side activities are more interesting but a lot of them just have you going back to completed maps looking for items or enemy types while on a time limit that will likely require you to know which paths things are on to complete it. View is a little too close and can make it difficult to see sometimes.
Not a big fan of the busywork and looking for hidden items but it is a very good game. Need to try the second, third, and fourth SNES games now.
This series as well as ones like Klonoa make for some good side scrollers that a lot of people probably missed.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1366291465773613058
Visual novel in the World of Darkness setting with a focus on the werewolves. Good art and music with often well written and good mechanic concepts, while also rushed in every sense when it comes to learning about other characters and the setting and is over so quickly that like a lot of games that try to use stats or health they end up being pointless.
The five personality assessment options just end with the highest pushing you into a style for the last 1/3 of the game, werewolf form changes is a great idea barely used, and glory/honor/wisdom that takes over for your personality type after you become a werewolf are entirely pointless. It's all a good system to have for a game about learning that you are a werewolf, finding a tribe, looking at situations differently based on the personality you built and characters responding differently based on what they think of you, and using your abilities in a visual novel form but you never really get to enjoy any of it. Your amount of current rage can change how your character responds to situations and willpower can be used often but I haven't seen health be as useless in a game since Disco Elysium, it is rarely required and even if used it is easy to get back before it is needed again. You spend so little time with most characters and depending on your route some of the likes and dislikes really just won't matter at all and the way in which your actions can completely change police and journalists views is particularly ridiculous. With all the minor changes that can happen there is the usual few events or dialogue lines that don't really make sense and some being quite impossible when it seemed to imply a dead guy showed up. It's kind of strange in some series of events that it still seems to consider the main human guy to be a friend of yours.
With the game being so short (under two hours for a playthrough) and so little time to get to know yourself and the characters it is unfortunate that one of your first decisions is going to see the forest where you will meet some of the characters and where you can feel the presence of the forest and your dreams more or you can go to town to meet different characters and learn more about the townspeople, your family, the history of the forest. It would help to just have both. Even the final conflict can be solved in a very sudden, rushed through, and anticlimactic way if you go for a more peaceful route. If you end the game fighting you can use your form changes in a more practical way that will conserve health and energy in the fight but even that tends to not really matter.
I can give it a small recommendation. It's not a great one to play through once going off of the choices you would want to make but if you are willing to take multiple playthroughs (which will cause you to see a lot of the same events a lot but sometimes with a few differences based on your rage level) you get a wider view of the characters and setting, and you can have a final battle ripping off the heads of Polish politicians, police, and neo-Nazis and I can't complain about that.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1363629703483904001
The five personality assessment options just end with the highest pushing you into a style for the last 1/3 of the game, werewolf form changes is a great idea barely used, and glory/honor/wisdom that takes over for your personality type after you become a werewolf are entirely pointless. It's all a good system to have for a game about learning that you are a werewolf, finding a tribe, looking at situations differently based on the personality you built and characters responding differently based on what they think of you, and using your abilities in a visual novel form but you never really get to enjoy any of it. Your amount of current rage can change how your character responds to situations and willpower can be used often but I haven't seen health be as useless in a game since Disco Elysium, it is rarely required and even if used it is easy to get back before it is needed again. You spend so little time with most characters and depending on your route some of the likes and dislikes really just won't matter at all and the way in which your actions can completely change police and journalists views is particularly ridiculous. With all the minor changes that can happen there is the usual few events or dialogue lines that don't really make sense and some being quite impossible when it seemed to imply a dead guy showed up. It's kind of strange in some series of events that it still seems to consider the main human guy to be a friend of yours.
With the game being so short (under two hours for a playthrough) and so little time to get to know yourself and the characters it is unfortunate that one of your first decisions is going to see the forest where you will meet some of the characters and where you can feel the presence of the forest and your dreams more or you can go to town to meet different characters and learn more about the townspeople, your family, the history of the forest. It would help to just have both. Even the final conflict can be solved in a very sudden, rushed through, and anticlimactic way if you go for a more peaceful route. If you end the game fighting you can use your form changes in a more practical way that will conserve health and energy in the fight but even that tends to not really matter.
I can give it a small recommendation. It's not a great one to play through once going off of the choices you would want to make but if you are willing to take multiple playthroughs (which will cause you to see a lot of the same events a lot but sometimes with a few differences based on your rage level) you get a wider view of the characters and setting, and you can have a final battle ripping off the heads of Polish politicians, police, and neo-Nazis and I can't complain about that.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1363629703483904001
Comedic post-apocalyptic superhero adventure RPG. Game is broken up by different sets of five missions that have you moving your party of heroes around the overworld map, fighting enemies, collecting items, and trying to solve the problem. Going to a mission location usually has you interacting with a few things, using items, or a hero's power to complete the assignment. At times dated but a lot of funny writing, good variety of enemies with each types having a detailed description.
Poor equipment and inventory management where each of the eventually nine heroes in your party will equip a large amount of armor that will all add up a defense value as well as a melee and ranged weapon. It's never interesting throwing items around between party members when characters outgrow things and there is little strategy behind given your frontline or stronger characters (or the ones without a combat superpower) better weapons and just buying all the new available armor. The enemies are entertaining to look at when the fights start and you get some funny descriptions of combat but your equipped weapons don't really effect the details or sound effects and there is no accompanying visuals. The humor does start to quickly fade when you are attacked by the same types of enemies saying the same things for the 20th time. The game was likely made in a way that the adventure elements wouldn't prevent the more RPG focused fans from enjoying the game and so the RPG fans wouldn't be put off by the adventure elements and that just kind of ends up giving the game a fairly dull use of both, and that's before the UI elements that just haven't aged well.
One to try just for the writing if you are fan of the style and don't mind playing older games. Would be an interesting kind of game to see a modern version of with all the ridiculous hero powers getting a better focus as the best this version usually does is a power being useful in combat, travel, or just being used once for a specific mission and then never needing to be used again.
Poor equipment and inventory management where each of the eventually nine heroes in your party will equip a large amount of armor that will all add up a defense value as well as a melee and ranged weapon. It's never interesting throwing items around between party members when characters outgrow things and there is little strategy behind given your frontline or stronger characters (or the ones without a combat superpower) better weapons and just buying all the new available armor. The enemies are entertaining to look at when the fights start and you get some funny descriptions of combat but your equipped weapons don't really effect the details or sound effects and there is no accompanying visuals. The humor does start to quickly fade when you are attacked by the same types of enemies saying the same things for the 20th time. The game was likely made in a way that the adventure elements wouldn't prevent the more RPG focused fans from enjoying the game and so the RPG fans wouldn't be put off by the adventure elements and that just kind of ends up giving the game a fairly dull use of both, and that's before the UI elements that just haven't aged well.
One to try just for the writing if you are fan of the style and don't mind playing older games. Would be an interesting kind of game to see a modern version of with all the ridiculous hero powers getting a better focus as the best this version usually does is a power being useful in combat, travel, or just being used once for a specific mission and then never needing to be used again.
2000
Story fairly heavily focused on war and destruction with side quests that portray people and cities trying to survive and create a new life after the destruction of their cities and people, people trying to escape destruction or being made into soldiers, and often more tragic centered character arcs about finding and coming to terms with your place in the world and duties given or accepted. Vivi struggles with finding out that he and others like him were created for war and a desire to find his place in the world, Steiner dealing with his desire to go against his queen and oath as a night to follow a path he believes in, Freya continuing to embody the heroic idea of a knight while losing almost everything and everyone she cares about over the course of the game. The often more tragic tone, frequent loss of life and destruction, and the mention of lasting effects and hardships caused over the course of the game is really a nice change when compared to a lot of popular JRPG series where practically no one dies and there is no consequences for anything. Vivi is really the standout character, getting the best moments, getting the most frequent time in the spotlight throughout the entire game, even the ending, and influencing and being influenced by other party members more than anyone else.
Does a better job of making cities feel more alive and like they have a larger scale than most modern JRPGs that seem to want to do no more than put four buildings, a weapon shop, and an inn as a major landmark. Even though you can't go everywhere you can see the other streets, the detailed background of other locations, and NPCs that walk between the different sections. Dungeons and towns are small compared to a lot of games but look good, unique, and have a lot of detail put into them. An excellent soundtrack. Main theme, character themes, town themes. A lot of good music throughout the game.
Ability system that has you equipping items with skills set to them that are then learnable by certain characters at different AP values, with AP being earned in battles along with XP. The system is better than 8's junctions but is really just busywork that should be tied to levels, it's made worse by non active party members gaining no experience or AP and the game not even allowing you to swap items with character that are with you but not in the active group. It doesn't help that the description of some of the abilities is nonsensical. The trance system both poorly handled and just kind of boring. Characters build up a meter that puts them into a temporary more powerful mode but you have no control of when it is used, and some of the characters just have dull trance modes where they might just get to cast spells twice or just do more damage instead of doing anything more unique. The character model also changes in more often just an odd way. There are a lot of terrible side activities, one of the worst and most time consuming I've seen in a JRPG being needed to get some of the better equipment in the game or to find certain enemies
Combat is mostly typical serviceable JRPG fare, most Final Fantasy games rarely giving you the options to do anything that interesting or enemies that provide much of a challenge. What I didn't like about this one is that it is very heavily based around equipping items and abilities that you have learned that will allow you to ignore the status elements enemies inflict that the game tends to go overboard with and tends to use as the only source of challenge. So it just becomes remembering what enemies use or dying to them and then going through the menus to move more stuff around that you probably are already doing to keep new equipment on everyone to keep learning more abilities that it also wants you to keep switching because of the low number of points you get to spend to equip them.
Some of the party just isn't that interesting or doesn't get enough time and many of the characters just have dull or almost useless abilities. Zidane's main thing is to attempt to steal from enemies, Vivi has a mostly useless focus ability that slightly increases his damage, Garnet and Eiko are basically the same but with different summons and Eiko typically just being better, Amarant can throw unequipped weapons and items which is probably one of the worst abilities I can think of, you need to have Quina constantly eating new enemies to gain abilities their abilities, and Steiner can do magic sword attacks which can be very nice but if you don't have Vivi in the party with him he just loses that whole ability.
Quina is mostly just comic relief, even only getting a more important character moment in a hidden scene with Vivi. Eiko joins late and a lot of her moments seem rushed but she gets some good moments and is one of the few child characters to join you in an RPG that isn't constantly annoying. Amarant is probably one of the least important playable characters I've seen in a JRPG, both joining very late and with no previous moments in the plot and just acting somewhat like the early moments of protagonists of the previous Final Fantasy games as he tries to understand Zidane's more carefree and helpful behavior. Even in other games the late joining character tends to have moments throughout the earlier story. It would have been nice to have Beatrix or even Blank join you over him. Amarant would probably play off Freya well but neither character gets much time for themselves in general, Freya is basically done having any important role in the game in the early moments of disk 2 and they have even less time together. Zidane has some very good moments but his whole backstory is basically done in short rushed through segment that comes near the very end of the game, and that whole plot line and connected characters ends up not being very interesting due to how little time you spend in it and because a similar plot has been used in multiple other games at this point.
Lower quality than it should be due to being a port of the Android/iOS update of the PS game. Updates and Moguri Mod vastly improve making it the best version due to quality of life updates (a mode to speed the game up, give steal 100% success rate, activate trance mode, turn encounters off, faster battle loads), though there can be issues with the screen showing too much in cutscenes (models waiting outside of what would be the normal picture to walk in or out).
The overall game tends to go from being really good up until about disk 3, and then it mostly just becomes ok. As more uninteresting and rushed plot moments come into play, rapid dull boss fights, and less moments for the supporting cast as you fly to more hidden locations.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1358370500808900608
Does a better job of making cities feel more alive and like they have a larger scale than most modern JRPGs that seem to want to do no more than put four buildings, a weapon shop, and an inn as a major landmark. Even though you can't go everywhere you can see the other streets, the detailed background of other locations, and NPCs that walk between the different sections. Dungeons and towns are small compared to a lot of games but look good, unique, and have a lot of detail put into them. An excellent soundtrack. Main theme, character themes, town themes. A lot of good music throughout the game.
Ability system that has you equipping items with skills set to them that are then learnable by certain characters at different AP values, with AP being earned in battles along with XP. The system is better than 8's junctions but is really just busywork that should be tied to levels, it's made worse by non active party members gaining no experience or AP and the game not even allowing you to swap items with character that are with you but not in the active group. It doesn't help that the description of some of the abilities is nonsensical. The trance system both poorly handled and just kind of boring. Characters build up a meter that puts them into a temporary more powerful mode but you have no control of when it is used, and some of the characters just have dull trance modes where they might just get to cast spells twice or just do more damage instead of doing anything more unique. The character model also changes in more often just an odd way. There are a lot of terrible side activities, one of the worst and most time consuming I've seen in a JRPG being needed to get some of the better equipment in the game or to find certain enemies
Combat is mostly typical serviceable JRPG fare, most Final Fantasy games rarely giving you the options to do anything that interesting or enemies that provide much of a challenge. What I didn't like about this one is that it is very heavily based around equipping items and abilities that you have learned that will allow you to ignore the status elements enemies inflict that the game tends to go overboard with and tends to use as the only source of challenge. So it just becomes remembering what enemies use or dying to them and then going through the menus to move more stuff around that you probably are already doing to keep new equipment on everyone to keep learning more abilities that it also wants you to keep switching because of the low number of points you get to spend to equip them.
Some of the party just isn't that interesting or doesn't get enough time and many of the characters just have dull or almost useless abilities. Zidane's main thing is to attempt to steal from enemies, Vivi has a mostly useless focus ability that slightly increases his damage, Garnet and Eiko are basically the same but with different summons and Eiko typically just being better, Amarant can throw unequipped weapons and items which is probably one of the worst abilities I can think of, you need to have Quina constantly eating new enemies to gain abilities their abilities, and Steiner can do magic sword attacks which can be very nice but if you don't have Vivi in the party with him he just loses that whole ability.
Quina is mostly just comic relief, even only getting a more important character moment in a hidden scene with Vivi. Eiko joins late and a lot of her moments seem rushed but she gets some good moments and is one of the few child characters to join you in an RPG that isn't constantly annoying. Amarant is probably one of the least important playable characters I've seen in a JRPG, both joining very late and with no previous moments in the plot and just acting somewhat like the early moments of protagonists of the previous Final Fantasy games as he tries to understand Zidane's more carefree and helpful behavior. Even in other games the late joining character tends to have moments throughout the earlier story. It would have been nice to have Beatrix or even Blank join you over him. Amarant would probably play off Freya well but neither character gets much time for themselves in general, Freya is basically done having any important role in the game in the early moments of disk 2 and they have even less time together. Zidane has some very good moments but his whole backstory is basically done in short rushed through segment that comes near the very end of the game, and that whole plot line and connected characters ends up not being very interesting due to how little time you spend in it and because a similar plot has been used in multiple other games at this point.
Lower quality than it should be due to being a port of the Android/iOS update of the PS game. Updates and Moguri Mod vastly improve making it the best version due to quality of life updates (a mode to speed the game up, give steal 100% success rate, activate trance mode, turn encounters off, faster battle loads), though there can be issues with the screen showing too much in cutscenes (models waiting outside of what would be the normal picture to walk in or out).
The overall game tends to go from being really good up until about disk 3, and then it mostly just becomes ok. As more uninteresting and rushed plot moments come into play, rapid dull boss fights, and less moments for the supporting cast as you fly to more hidden locations.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1358370500808900608
2021
For the most part, it is more of the same but that does gives us more of some of the best. Same great gameplay and world design with some excellent maps, entertaining people and settings, killing rich assholes, and the ability to bring equipment you earn into the other two games in the series. Updates Hitman 1 and 2 to be in line with this game.
Not much in the way of new mechanics, you have a phone to hack a few things in some missions and keypads exist now that require you to learn or memorize the codes for them. A bit lacking in content with just five main maps (with the Berlin map probably being the worst in the three games and squanders what could have been an interesting concept), a short linear finale, no sniper missions, and the three escalations missions locked behind an overpriced deluxe edition.
The story is dull and basically repeated from previous games with the same Diana and 47 constantly and never betraying each other. Frequent crashes and connection errors, don't know if the crashes are the game, server, or Epic's fault. With the option of having all three game's levels played through Hitman 3 (thankfully while taking less space) this is one of my favorite games even though I can't say the maps or mechanics have grown since 2.
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1355792342834311169
Not much in the way of new mechanics, you have a phone to hack a few things in some missions and keypads exist now that require you to learn or memorize the codes for them. A bit lacking in content with just five main maps (with the Berlin map probably being the worst in the three games and squanders what could have been an interesting concept), a short linear finale, no sniper missions, and the three escalations missions locked behind an overpriced deluxe edition.
The story is dull and basically repeated from previous games with the same Diana and 47 constantly and never betraying each other. Frequent crashes and connection errors, don't know if the crashes are the game, server, or Epic's fault. With the option of having all three game's levels played through Hitman 3 (thankfully while taking less space) this is one of my favorite games even though I can't say the maps or mechanics have grown since 2.
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1355792342834311169
2019
A parkour bullet time focused side scrolling shooter. Flip off walls, ride skateboards and barrels, bounce bullets off of frying pans and certain walls, spin to avoid bullets, split your aim while using two guns to hit multiple targets. Short campaign that continues to change things up a bit as you go through it.
Usually I really like or love games like this but I kind of hate this one. It always feel awkward to control, movement almost always looks awkward which made me never want to use slow motion, I never found it satisfying to shoot anything or to use the weak looking melee kick, it is too easy, and I never actually enjoyed the levels that changed things up the most by having you do things like fight while falling from a rooftop, riding a motorcycle, or while wearing a propeller hat in a dream world, etc. You can find some hidden objects that give you modifiers that you can edit after you beat the game but even with those I don't see much replay value. Even a lot of the speedrun focused Youtube videos can't make the game look fun.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1351037104151797760
Usually I really like or love games like this but I kind of hate this one. It always feel awkward to control, movement almost always looks awkward which made me never want to use slow motion, I never found it satisfying to shoot anything or to use the weak looking melee kick, it is too easy, and I never actually enjoyed the levels that changed things up the most by having you do things like fight while falling from a rooftop, riding a motorcycle, or while wearing a propeller hat in a dream world, etc. You can find some hidden objects that give you modifiers that you can edit after you beat the game but even with those I don't see much replay value. Even a lot of the speedrun focused Youtube videos can't make the game look fun.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1351037104151797760
2020
A narrative focused roguelike retelling of the fall of Camelot with gameplay a bit more similar to chess than a typical turn based RPG. Mordred's lies and manipulations have broken the kingdom and the round table, you start the game being able to choose from either Guinevere or Lancelot with the goal of reaching the final battle sight between Arthur and Mordred's army. Along the way you will attempt to pick up supplies and allies as you choose between locations as you attempt to find the location of the final battle up north.
Certain characters that you can find will unlock new characters to play as such as the witch Morgana, archer Branwen, Rhiannon, Merlyn, and some of the knights of the round table such as Gawaine and Kay. Those characters often being found by finding information or named areas in your travels that will point you towards certain locations. Playing as different characters will give you a different perspective on certain events and different lines of dialogue when meeting people or when you have your climactic battle with Mordred, which can also be fought by Arthur himself in a much more personal moment for both characters. Some of them give you some very different options when it comes to abilities or playstyle with Branwen having a long ranged attack skill, Morgana being able to charm animals and beasts, and Merlyn not having a weapon at all.
As is common in games from inkle the game is well written with characters talking about their goals and pasts as you travel, telling a large collection of tales around campfires while you rest, the conversations between allies, enemies, and characters of unknown allegiances on maps, and the direction the story takes influencing the skills that you learn to aid in battle.
When you reach a new area and the map is loaded, not every NPC character is going to be hostile, and even if they are, they don't all have to be killed. Your goal is only to continue in your travels to reach Arthur, all you are trying to do is to reach the far side of the map, meaning you could bypass enemies depending on how both sides move. Some locations will only have allies that may join you, some may have characters that will offer you something, some will shift between being hostile or not, characters may frequently retreat. The way that I gained Branwen as a character involved me meeting them while they were seemingly hostile, they refused to join me or let me pass. Reading the character information said they were unable to attack with their bow when I was one space away, moving into that range lead to more conversation where you could ask them to drop their weapon, while they backed off I left the map without killing her, a few areas later she showed up again to help me against Mordred's soldiers and joined the group for that playthrough and to be used as a main character on a future playthrough.
That's how the encounters are supposed to go, variety of options, leading to very different events, or ways to play. But things are typically nowhere near as interesting as recruiting Branwen. Most areas are much more generic, or just confusing in what is going on. You may be attacked by sword armed villagers that will advance on you, who say they will kill you, say they nearly beat the last person they found to death, and that they were told by Mordred's army to watch for you. You have no real conversation or movement options to stop them or way to convince them of anything, your goal is just to get through them to end of the map. Killing one brings up text that you killed someone in cold blood, why it would say that in the situation I don't know, but no one ever commented on it, it gained or altered no abilities, and was never mentioned again. Some encounters you will see again and again and again, some locations are more randomized in what can happen but what might happen is literally nothing is there and you walk to the other side of an empty map. One of my least favorite things is in this game, rations. you need rations to keep up your groups strength and morale but your group never seems to think that if they kill all the enemy knights, villagers, bandits, or wild animals on a location that maybe they should find some food among their enemies, no options to hunt either. The very reason why I hate when games have rations, no one needs to eat except for you and yours, and why would you ever try to find food in a logical way?
The actual movement and combat is based on alternating between two movement styles and making use of abilities you have gained through the story (or started with). You have an attack ready style that allows you to move up, down, left, and right and you have a scouting style that allows for diagonal movement. You capture squares to your color as you move with the scouting style also gaining you nearby tiles. Moving through captured tiles allows you to move further or may effect how certain skills work. You kill characters by moving into them, everything dies in one hit, including your allies and main characters (your heart based health icons only drop as you don't eat or due to certain events). Abilities might allow you to attack in a direction not normally allowed by a stance, attack without moving into the square itself, move two or three spaces instead of one, shift stances after moving, crash or jump over obstacles, move through water, move back in different ways, control certain types of enemy characters, etc. All abilities are powered by resolve which his based on your morale, morale can increase due to events or be kept up by keeping your characters fed in your travels. If you spend too much time waiting or just too much time on a map in general morale starts to decrease and you may find it a good idea to try to the flee the encounter instead of pressing on. Story events might gain you new abilities, some that are just learned and some that you have the option of replacing other skills with.
I really don't like the actual gameplay. It's slow, boring, very limiting both as a combat game or in giving you unique options to handle the situations you are in, some ability descriptions are confusingly written, it's cheap with enemies on higher difficulties often reacting perfectly to you but still giving you a way to win because they never seem to know what skills you have. Which, of course, puts morale and lucking into finding food to keep morale up as one of the most important things to do, which is then made even worse by the randomness of characters joining you who will also need food, and also the randomness of what kind of skills you will have the option of learning. Even calling on additional allies that have joined you to appear on a map costs resolve. Everything made even worse with the game being a roguelike, suddenly that nonsense skill description probably not worth trying. Maybe if you do a certain thing you might find a different way to resolve an event? Probably not worth it, after all, you're not even sure of what the game is capable of taking into consideration and if you are nearing the end of a playthrough and maybe have some tips that might get you a new character then you sure as hell aren't going to risk finding out now.
Here's a good example of how the game just doesn't really function at all like it should. I beat the game as Guinevere my first try on the base easiest setting, unlocking Morgana and Branwen. Then I updated to the next difficulty for my second run and beat it as Branwen while unlocking Rhiannon (and getting Morgana and Guinevere in my group). Third time I up the difficulty again and play as Lancelot, and I get Merlyn and four random NPCs to join me (only one joined in the last two games). Not a single character has any useful abilities, Lancelot gains nothing the entire playthrough, except for one of the random women has one of the best abilities in the game, she can move and attack in the scouting stance. Even on the third difficulty up the computer doesn't understand this (and if it did, I suppose it would just create a hell of a lot more problems leaving you with no practical options). She probably killed about 10 soldiers and some creatures through the playthrough and single handedly finished three maps. So in a random map Lancelot starts out with some random NPC guy that joined me that has never done anything or even been used and he thanks him for being a great help and knights him. Also saw some repeated events that I saw in the last two games (but still a lot of new stuff). Last section she again kills three knights because Lancelot and Arthur are useless. So I go to fight Mordred with Lancelot. As the characters talk with Mordred they might gain new abilities. Mordred moves, I move to a safe spot with advantage. Mordred's turn starts he randomly gains a spinning attack that he can use to get out of the stance he is in, instantly uses it, kills me, I lose. Is that basically cheating and incompetence for not thinking to maybe give the new abilities AFTER a character's turn. Yes, but, on the other hand, I don't actually get anything for winning. The end game gives no real story events, the surviving characters don't get together for one more conversation about what they have gone through, Merlyn unlocked as playable as soon as I got him it doesn't matter if I get him killed or lose the playthrough. Of course, that in itself is pretty boring.
The entire final battle with Mordred is poorly thought out in the first place. You are put into a one an one fight to the death but as time goes by your allies just randomly die (even if you beat all the knights and forced them to retreat in the previous area), not that it matters because you don't hear from them again, and your morale goes down which I would assume cause you to lose if it drops all the way. I never saw it drop all the way though because what has happened ever time is that eventually Mordred just kind of lets you kill him by moving into a spot where you can either use an ability or sometimes just attack him normally. Which does make sense he would do that, if one of you doesn't you are basically just playing a game of tic tac toe where unless someone just completely forgets what is going on no one should ever actually lose.
Well written but the gameplay is too poor and limited and while there are a lot of events and alternate lines written a lot of the same scenes and situations will play out and every playthrough has even had completely different characters repeat the same lines in certain situations. Even getting to the last battle with Arthur it just plays out the exact same way five times, with just one of those times playing out the same way but on a different looking map. One of the strangest things is that if you play as Merlyn no one tells stories when you rest at night, taking away the best written parts of the game.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1348326960385048576
Certain characters that you can find will unlock new characters to play as such as the witch Morgana, archer Branwen, Rhiannon, Merlyn, and some of the knights of the round table such as Gawaine and Kay. Those characters often being found by finding information or named areas in your travels that will point you towards certain locations. Playing as different characters will give you a different perspective on certain events and different lines of dialogue when meeting people or when you have your climactic battle with Mordred, which can also be fought by Arthur himself in a much more personal moment for both characters. Some of them give you some very different options when it comes to abilities or playstyle with Branwen having a long ranged attack skill, Morgana being able to charm animals and beasts, and Merlyn not having a weapon at all.
As is common in games from inkle the game is well written with characters talking about their goals and pasts as you travel, telling a large collection of tales around campfires while you rest, the conversations between allies, enemies, and characters of unknown allegiances on maps, and the direction the story takes influencing the skills that you learn to aid in battle.
When you reach a new area and the map is loaded, not every NPC character is going to be hostile, and even if they are, they don't all have to be killed. Your goal is only to continue in your travels to reach Arthur, all you are trying to do is to reach the far side of the map, meaning you could bypass enemies depending on how both sides move. Some locations will only have allies that may join you, some may have characters that will offer you something, some will shift between being hostile or not, characters may frequently retreat. The way that I gained Branwen as a character involved me meeting them while they were seemingly hostile, they refused to join me or let me pass. Reading the character information said they were unable to attack with their bow when I was one space away, moving into that range lead to more conversation where you could ask them to drop their weapon, while they backed off I left the map without killing her, a few areas later she showed up again to help me against Mordred's soldiers and joined the group for that playthrough and to be used as a main character on a future playthrough.
That's how the encounters are supposed to go, variety of options, leading to very different events, or ways to play. But things are typically nowhere near as interesting as recruiting Branwen. Most areas are much more generic, or just confusing in what is going on. You may be attacked by sword armed villagers that will advance on you, who say they will kill you, say they nearly beat the last person they found to death, and that they were told by Mordred's army to watch for you. You have no real conversation or movement options to stop them or way to convince them of anything, your goal is just to get through them to end of the map. Killing one brings up text that you killed someone in cold blood, why it would say that in the situation I don't know, but no one ever commented on it, it gained or altered no abilities, and was never mentioned again. Some encounters you will see again and again and again, some locations are more randomized in what can happen but what might happen is literally nothing is there and you walk to the other side of an empty map. One of my least favorite things is in this game, rations. you need rations to keep up your groups strength and morale but your group never seems to think that if they kill all the enemy knights, villagers, bandits, or wild animals on a location that maybe they should find some food among their enemies, no options to hunt either. The very reason why I hate when games have rations, no one needs to eat except for you and yours, and why would you ever try to find food in a logical way?
The actual movement and combat is based on alternating between two movement styles and making use of abilities you have gained through the story (or started with). You have an attack ready style that allows you to move up, down, left, and right and you have a scouting style that allows for diagonal movement. You capture squares to your color as you move with the scouting style also gaining you nearby tiles. Moving through captured tiles allows you to move further or may effect how certain skills work. You kill characters by moving into them, everything dies in one hit, including your allies and main characters (your heart based health icons only drop as you don't eat or due to certain events). Abilities might allow you to attack in a direction not normally allowed by a stance, attack without moving into the square itself, move two or three spaces instead of one, shift stances after moving, crash or jump over obstacles, move through water, move back in different ways, control certain types of enemy characters, etc. All abilities are powered by resolve which his based on your morale, morale can increase due to events or be kept up by keeping your characters fed in your travels. If you spend too much time waiting or just too much time on a map in general morale starts to decrease and you may find it a good idea to try to the flee the encounter instead of pressing on. Story events might gain you new abilities, some that are just learned and some that you have the option of replacing other skills with.
I really don't like the actual gameplay. It's slow, boring, very limiting both as a combat game or in giving you unique options to handle the situations you are in, some ability descriptions are confusingly written, it's cheap with enemies on higher difficulties often reacting perfectly to you but still giving you a way to win because they never seem to know what skills you have. Which, of course, puts morale and lucking into finding food to keep morale up as one of the most important things to do, which is then made even worse by the randomness of characters joining you who will also need food, and also the randomness of what kind of skills you will have the option of learning. Even calling on additional allies that have joined you to appear on a map costs resolve. Everything made even worse with the game being a roguelike, suddenly that nonsense skill description probably not worth trying. Maybe if you do a certain thing you might find a different way to resolve an event? Probably not worth it, after all, you're not even sure of what the game is capable of taking into consideration and if you are nearing the end of a playthrough and maybe have some tips that might get you a new character then you sure as hell aren't going to risk finding out now.
Here's a good example of how the game just doesn't really function at all like it should. I beat the game as Guinevere my first try on the base easiest setting, unlocking Morgana and Branwen. Then I updated to the next difficulty for my second run and beat it as Branwen while unlocking Rhiannon (and getting Morgana and Guinevere in my group). Third time I up the difficulty again and play as Lancelot, and I get Merlyn and four random NPCs to join me (only one joined in the last two games). Not a single character has any useful abilities, Lancelot gains nothing the entire playthrough, except for one of the random women has one of the best abilities in the game, she can move and attack in the scouting stance. Even on the third difficulty up the computer doesn't understand this (and if it did, I suppose it would just create a hell of a lot more problems leaving you with no practical options). She probably killed about 10 soldiers and some creatures through the playthrough and single handedly finished three maps. So in a random map Lancelot starts out with some random NPC guy that joined me that has never done anything or even been used and he thanks him for being a great help and knights him. Also saw some repeated events that I saw in the last two games (but still a lot of new stuff). Last section she again kills three knights because Lancelot and Arthur are useless. So I go to fight Mordred with Lancelot. As the characters talk with Mordred they might gain new abilities. Mordred moves, I move to a safe spot with advantage. Mordred's turn starts he randomly gains a spinning attack that he can use to get out of the stance he is in, instantly uses it, kills me, I lose. Is that basically cheating and incompetence for not thinking to maybe give the new abilities AFTER a character's turn. Yes, but, on the other hand, I don't actually get anything for winning. The end game gives no real story events, the surviving characters don't get together for one more conversation about what they have gone through, Merlyn unlocked as playable as soon as I got him it doesn't matter if I get him killed or lose the playthrough. Of course, that in itself is pretty boring.
The entire final battle with Mordred is poorly thought out in the first place. You are put into a one an one fight to the death but as time goes by your allies just randomly die (even if you beat all the knights and forced them to retreat in the previous area), not that it matters because you don't hear from them again, and your morale goes down which I would assume cause you to lose if it drops all the way. I never saw it drop all the way though because what has happened ever time is that eventually Mordred just kind of lets you kill him by moving into a spot where you can either use an ability or sometimes just attack him normally. Which does make sense he would do that, if one of you doesn't you are basically just playing a game of tic tac toe where unless someone just completely forgets what is going on no one should ever actually lose.
Well written but the gameplay is too poor and limited and while there are a lot of events and alternate lines written a lot of the same scenes and situations will play out and every playthrough has even had completely different characters repeat the same lines in certain situations. Even getting to the last battle with Arthur it just plays out the exact same way five times, with just one of those times playing out the same way but on a different looking map. One of the strangest things is that if you play as Merlyn no one tells stories when you rest at night, taking away the best written parts of the game.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1348326960385048576